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In the latest of our weekly tributes to 90 years of Warner films, our film critic blazes away on behalf of Goodfellas

It still rankles with me that Martin Scorsese’s mafia movie Goodfellas was beaten to the Best Picture Oscar in 1991 by Dances with Wolves. While Dances went on to become a mere curiosity, Goodfellas is a classic, arguably Scorsese’s greatest movie. It’s a kinetic, thrilling, amoral ride through 30 years of being in the mob, with Ray Liotta heading the ultimate gangster cast of Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, with Lorraine Bracco as the feisty moll.

Based on the journalist Nicholas Pileggi’s true account of the life of Henry Hill, a mafia honcho retired into the FBI witness protection